Did your website disappear from Google search—or never show up at all? If your website is indexed on Google but doesn’t show up for your own name or brand, yet appears normally on Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yahoo, you’re not alone.
This article documents what appears to be a serving-layer failure in Google Search affecting small, legitimate sites. While we can’t diagnose the internal mechanics of Google, the pattern strongly suggests a breakdown in the retrieval process. It’s a recurring bug where some indexed sites simply fail to surface—even for direct, branded queries where they should be the most relevant result.
Note: We believe this warrants attention from Google’s search quality and indexing teams. The recurrence and fixability of the issue suggest a specific, correctable weakness in how certain sites are served—not just an edge-case “SEO” failure.
We’ve tracked this issue since 2019 across personal brand, portfolio, and small business sites. It’s obscure, easy to misdiagnose, and often dismissed as standard SEO underperformance.
We call it the Indexed-but-Invisible issue: a pattern where a site is fully indexed in Google, yet doesn’t appear in results—not even for its own name. It’s a visibility gap and it's fixable, but only through manual intervention.
This problem wears the mask of normal SEO struggle. It looks like “Google being Google,” which is why most site owners—and many SEOs—either misdiagnose it or give up.
To be clear: this isn’t about rankings, it’s about a fundamental visibility and serving failure.
These sites are in the index, but Google fails to surface them—sometimes for months or years—until nudged. That shouldn’t be necessary.
“Indexed” means Google knows the page exists. “Visible” means it appears in search results. These are not the same. In theory, if a site is indexed, it should be visible—especially for low-competition branded searches. But this issue proves otherwise.
This article outlines the nature of the issue, who it affects, and why common SEO advice doesn’t apply. If your legitimate website has vanished from Google, but is still indexed and visible on other search engines, this is likely the problem you’re facing.
We give examples below of sites that ranked for branded searches as expected, then for all practical purposes abruptly disappeared from Google search. Affected sites do not experience a drop in ranking or get deindexed—they simply are no longer served in Google’s SERPs. However, they are still visible on other search engines.
The good news: If your site is indexed-but-invisible on Google, it can recover and regain expected positioning—sometimes snapping back into place within a day—even if it’s been missing from Google SERPs for a year or more. Recovery requires human intervention or “nudging,” but not because of anything inherently wrong with your site.
Important: The specific issue outlined below does NOT stem from factors blamed in other SEO articles: new domain, manual penalties, security problems, URL removals, noindex directives, low-quality content, robots.txt issues, generic brand name, algorithm update, etc. We’ve also seen it misattributed to DNS configuration, schema, CWV, and page rendering—but none of these are the cause.
In 2019, we experienced a number of requests from sites that “vanished from Google,” in quick succession, which brought it to our attention as a tangible, documentable problem. In 2020, we decided to document a few of the cases. As of 2025, site owners still face this Google search issue—and many affected sites are new builds that have never surfaced in Google at all, rather than disappearing after initial visibility.
Note: If a new website is not showing up on Google, you need to allow time for Google to crawl the site. That said, when built and launched correctly, most new sites should be findable for brand name or personal name within 1-2 weeks. If you are struggling with a new site or an algorithmic traffic drop, schedule an SEO consultation.
Affected Sites Share These Traits
Several years ago, a pattern emerged when we received multiple requests related to “why did my website disappear from Google” and “my Squarespace site disappeared.” Each of these sites had historically ranked for their brand or personal name, but suddenly stopped being served for those searches.
For small portfolio sites, branded or name-based queries are often the primary way people find them. These sites deserved to rank, and surfacing at the top of Google should not have required any intervention.
Here are the recurring characteristics we’ve seen across affected sites:
Site appears in Google’s index as expected. site:example.com
Domain active for years. The individual or business is well-established in their field. Site represents the expected, trustworthy, relevant result when searching for the person or brand.
UPDATE: We’ve since seen many newer domains encounter the same issue, but inexperienced site owners often assume the invisibility is just part of the SEO learning process—it’s not.
Previously ranked, then vanished: Many affected sites originally ranked in Google (often in position one) for a branded search, then abruptly disappeared, despite still being indexed.
Site missing ONLY from Google search results. Sites continue to be served on other search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo.
Common, broad-stroke SEO answers do not apply. Manual penalties, security issues, URL removals, pages marked noindex, robots.txt, etc. are not factors.
Portfolio site or personal brand website.
Update: The issue impacts personal brand sites, portfolio sites, and small businesses. Small businesses asking “why aren’t we ranking for brand name,” despite showing up on other search engines, should consider the issue outlined here.
Site hosted on Squarespace with no previous issues.
Update: Since first publishing this article, sites built on other platforms have requested help. Creatives and small businesses often choose the Squarespace platform, which likely explains the greater number of Squarespace complaints.
Why did these sites disappear from Google search?
The site owners are not to blame. They’d built simple sites that historically ranked well for branded searches. After realizing there was a problem, they followed common SEO advice—add content, optimize images, wait—but none of it worked. These factors are not why the sites went missing from Google search.
The general expectation is that Google’s systems are robust enough to maintain visibility for well-established sites—if a credible site has been stable for years, it shouldn’t suddenly disappear. But this problem shows that parts of Google’s opaque algorithms can be very sensitive.
Google isn’t actively punishing these sites. Instead, it seems to be an algorithmic anomaly where these sites get “stuck” in a negative state—a persistent, deep-seated miscalibration that prevents them from being served. Even without knowing the exact cause, the edge case issue is consistently fixable—manual intervention forces a re-calibration.
Outcome: The Problem is 100% Fixable
By all normal measures these sites should be visible on Google—regardless of platform, template, subpar structure or even sparse content. We don’t guarantee results, but every site we’ve assisted so far has regained expected visibility.
That said, these recoveries should not have required our involvement. Yet, in each case, only direct intervention led to resolution. Notably, every other search engine displayed the sites as expected.
What not to do? Don’t assume it will work itself out. Many site owners stay invisible on Google for months—sometimes years.
What to do? Google’s documentation is a good starting point for DIY troubleshooting. But if your efforts haven’t resolved the issue, it’s time to bring in experienced help. There’s no valid reason a fully indexed legitimate site should remain invisible for months.
Note, forum advice is often well-intentioned but not always accurate—especially for edge cases like this. A common suggestion for portfolio sites is to “add more text,” but content volume isn’t the issue. If you're stuck, it's important to consult someone familiar with visibility-specific problems, not just general SEO theory.
Examples of Excluded Sites
It’s not uncommon for sites fighting this issue to be missing from Google for months prior to intervention. But all sites we’ve assisted resumed normal and expected visibility in Google Search. See examples below of some sites that helped us document the pattern, dates indicate when we worked with the website owner:
February 2020: Liz Markus (artist)
March 2020: Jo Carkner (production designer)
July 2020: Steven Yavanian (landscape architect). This request played a key role in our decision to document the similarities among affected sites. This site was an operating small business with a Google Business Profile.
January 2021: Field Kallop (artist). The site owner reported the site was missing from Google search for a year: “I tried re-indexing my site and doing a few other things suggested by the SEO optimization tutorials on Squarespace, but nothing has worked. I would like some help fixing this so that people interested in my work can find my site more easily.”
June 2021: Jesse Heath (filmmaker). The site owner reported the site was dropped from Google SERPs in July 2020 and remained missing for a year until we worked together. This intentionally unstructured site demonstrates that factors like word count or traditional UX and SEO design principles aren’t the issue.
July 2021: August D’Angelo (screenwriter). This site was built on Squarespace 7.1 and newer than other examples (launched early 2020). Without a successful track record in search or a known “brand name,” the site owner didn’t have the same conviction as others that his personal site should be findable.
September 2021: Nina Djacic (director of photography)
June 2022: Nancy Pollock (fiber artist)
January 2023: Marlena Maduro Baraf (author). This site was of particular interest because it is an author website we designed back in 2016. The issue came to our attention when we tried to reference the site with another author. This site had been operating as expected for years—it demonstrated that the Google issue is not related to a site migration, a redesign, stagnation, or implementing SSL.
In every case, these sites were fully restored—without redesigns, content overhauls, or platform changes. While we may apply small, non-critical site adjustments, these do not account for the disappearance—or sudden recovery. As of 2025, we continue to regularly hear from sites facing this obscure issue.
These are legitimate, indexed sites that previously appeared for exact-match branded queries—then vanished from Google, yet remained visible on every other search engine. They reappear only after manual intervention. This behavior is not consistent with how ranking systems are expected to function.
Other Impacted Sites
There are other businesses and individuals still missing out on Google visibility due to this issue. Why? Some site owners simply don’t realize their brand vanished from search. One person reached out about an unrelated problem and only then realized her site was missing from Google—she’d been using DuckDuckGo as her default search engine and had no idea. And others give up out of sheer frustration.
Most of the site owners we’ve helped knew, without a shadow of doubt, that they should be searchable and findable. But less experienced creatives or new businesses may not push for an answer if they lack the same certainty about their name recognition or brand reputation, or assume this is just “how Google works.”
This isn’t about chasing traffic. It’s about being findable when someone looks you up. If someone types your name or business into Google and gets nothing—that’s not just inconvenient. That’s a credibility gap.
When we first wrote this article, quick forum searches turned up many more sites matching the criteria outlined above, some examples:
Two long-time professional photographers.
An illustrator was missing from Google SERPs for at least 3 years: “Squarespace website missing from only Google results.”
A production designer said: “Domain not appearing on Google search but first result on Bing and Yahoo.”
A fine art photographer asked: “My website disappeared from Google search.”
A graphic designer asked: “Why has my website stopped appearing on Google search results?”
A small business was impacted: “Website shows in site: but not in Google search results.”
These scattered forum requests show how often this issue is misdiagnosed, dismissed, or quietly abandoned. Over the years, we’ve heard from politicians, journalists, brick-and-mortar business owners, professional service providers, musicians, professors, and even an ex-Googler.
What to do?
If your site has stopped appearing on Google and you’re trying to resolve it yourself, keep in mind this isn’t something that typically responds to surface-level advice. We’ve heard of teams chasing dozens of recommendations without results.
Start with Google’s own support documentation. In some cases, sites may recover on their own. But just as often, sites stay stuck indefinitely without hands-on intervention. If you’ve exhausted standard SEO checklists and support threads—and have been waiting months without progress—you likely need to hire someone familiar with this specific pattern.
It’s worth noting that DIY small businesses or early-stage, pre-revenue founders often expect SEO and visibility issues to be solvable through free advice in forums. There’s plenty you can do on your own, but some issues fall outside what crowdsourced fixes can handle. It’s not about complexity, it’s about knowing what matters and what doesn’t. And when the problem affects your visibility, credibility, or revenue, that’s usually the moment to stop guessing and bring in help.
If your site is on Squarespace, also refer to the resources below:
Did your site “disappear” from Google?
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